Project title: The logic of sensation
Project description: What is at stake in the aesthetic? Following Willy Apollon, I believe that what is at stake in art is nothing less than what no human being can bear to lose: the capacity to feel, to be affected, and to make contact with what lies beyond words. Gilles Deleuze writes, painting at its most powerful deploys sensation—a collision of color, rhythm, and line that acts on the viewer before recognition or interpretation. In this model, the nervous system is not simply a biological organ, but a threshold of sensation—a site where force becomes affect. My research extends into non-human aesthetic expression on a project analyzing visual art created by bonobos (non-human great apes). What might it mean to be addressed by a non-human artwork? Drawing on Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am, I reflect on the aesthetic address of the Other, especially when that Other lies beyond language and human categories.
Most important achievement: Artist residency with the Lab of O at Hubbard Brook
Reflections on the College Scholar Program: The College Scholar Program represents what institutions of learning have long aspired to.